stephanie says @stephperry - Tumblr Blog

quarantimes, part 1 of ?

last week, i was walking to get an icy coffee from a restaurant, which has been turned inside out, its tables on the tree lawns and the service counter perched under a pop-up tent outside a sliding door, when i realized i hadn’t brought a fabric mask to cover my face. i turned around and counted the steps back to my house: 174 steps. what’s that? two minutes of suspended disbelief. - there’s a tree to the south of my house that didn’t produce leaves this year, that has the indecency to die out in full view. i have tried to recall whether it had leaves last year. i have scrolled through hundreds of photos and videos (my delight at the recycling truck that blasted bangers every week while emptying totes demanded documentation but somehow i never recorded the tree while creating wfh amusements before most everyone who could w’d from h) and i don’t know. i can’t figure out the species of tree, especially without leaves to reference, and i am worried about the sickly trunk, upright but accumulating moss, infecting?? the other trees?? maybe i should call 311, i’ve thought a half-dozen times. how do you quarantine a tree? how does its disease spread? i know the latin names of trees (quercus, fagus, pinus - heh - all of them feminine grammatically) but nothing about how they grow. - my routine tardiness is making me anxious. in the absence of plans and my habit of showing up always ten minutes late, i’ve come to fear the opprobrium of those who see punctuality as the highest virtue. “i can’t stand to be late,” “i’ve always been early.” they are so strident, their empathy for the ways in which others might experience time is so limited. i am panicked when i am a few minutes late now, and i want less to do anything, to commit to anything, lest the internalized chorus of always-on-timers torments me. i showed up to outdoor, distanced dinner last night a little late, tremendously ashamed, thinking of the people who like to remind me how late i always am, how i wake up too late left to my own devices. my dinner date didn’t care, but four and a half fucking months inside with the ghosts of my harshest critics as my most reliable company, has been corrosive for my mind. i can’t put together one of my stephaniemails. the knowledge that i invite criticism by publication however modest is too much. i don’t want to be in conversation with everyone who receives it. i don’t want to be late for a timeline i set. so maybe it’s semi-secret blogging for a while? maybe it’s not? eh

stephperry

now this tree is wood chips

quarantimes, part 1 of ?

Fuck this fucking boat

This boat is never going to get its fucking shit together, and we should go sink it into the river right this goddamn minute Do you have a lot of money? Would you like it to disintegrate at the bottom of a riverbed but you also desire that it gets there as a result of a futile but smug effort to keep a hole-mottled Antiques Roadshow reject afloat instead of just throwing fistfuls of cash from the dock?

Well, then have I got an opportunity for you! The S.S. Columbia is a hulking mass of metal scrap-to-be that fails all reasonable tests of seaworthiness and is docked in beautiful Buffalo, New York! Buffalo, a city of Super Bowl first runners-up and the sad sacks who cheer them on, is undergoing a “renaissance” of state-sponsored graft and spasmodic fits of smarm. This is a city that may or may not be on the rise, but certainly is doing its goshdarn best to earn a favorable write-up in The New York Times every five to seven years. Buffalo is almost not shedding residents year over year, and a person can buy a $10 drink in most any neighborhood in the third poorest city in America, so no one can say that Buffalo isn’t getting up every morning and putting on a tuxedo to work the Tim Hortons drive-thru. Dress for the job you want. If you squint and the light hits just right, Buffalo looks like a world-class city. S.S. Columbia apologists claim that the shipwright of this pleasure cruise-emeritus was “one of America’s greatest naval architects, Frank E. Kirby,” to which I say, name literally one other American naval architect. I’ll wait.

The S.S. Columbia is a rotten shipwreck that was built for the enjoyment of racists in early 20th century Detroit. In 1902, when the S.S. Columbia first set sail ferrying white privilege between Detroit and Bois Blanc Island in the Detroit River, it was the first ever steamship to feature a full ballroom, thus establishing the great American tradition of being unable to just sit quietly for 90 damn minutes while on the way to your destination. The S.S. Columbia is why we need to have tiny fucking televisions on airplanes and the entire internet on a mini-computer you can bring with you when you take a shit. The S.S. Columbia provided 46 years of whites-only service to and from the technically Canadian island amusement park, evading Michigan state anti-discrimination laws under the flimsy guise of transacting foreign commerce even though all patrons of the ship and the funfest disembarked from Detroit, no passage between the Canadian mainland and the island occurred and no actual conflict between Michigan and Canadian laws arose. Thus, the SCOTUS affirmed in 1948 that, “since the enterprise is conducted in this highly closed and localized manner with Canada’s full consent, no detraction whatever from that friendly neighbor’s sovereignty is implied by saying that the business itself is economically and socially an island of local Detroit business, although so largely carried on in Canadian waters” and therefore buoyant bullshit about systematically denying carriage to non-white people because the boat went to Canada did not float. The S.S. Columbia continued ferrying pleasure-seeking slobs of all backgrounds around the Detroit River until its retirement in 1991, after which it spent 13 years rotting next a steel plant/the American dream in the bankrupt Michigan city of Ecorse. Rather than leave the ship to sink into Lake Erie with its dignity intact and its hull full of zebra mussels, hoity-toity nostalgia slingers insisted upon shrink-wrapping the rotten decks of this nautical nightmare. In 1979, the ship was added to the National Register of Historic Places, which suggests a real fucking generous, I mean just exceptionally liberal, definition of “place,” which is generally understood to be a fixed location and not a glorified Greyhound bus of the low seas. A cabal of preservationists with some kind of sick Hudson Valley steamship reenactment fetish have dragged the ship across Lake Erie, first to Toledo and now to Buffalo, using tugboats and moving at a rate of one nautical mile per calendar year. They plan to raise 18 million U.S. dollars from fuck knows where in order to fix up the ship and run cruises up and down the Hudson River, a bourgeois downstate racket if I ever heard of one. Until then, the boat enthusiasts plan to keep the S.S. Columbia in Buffalo for a few years, save some money and make a big move when it’s really ready, which, surprise, is going to be never. I, too, once thought it was a good idea to camp out in Buffalo, take a job and then move to New York City when the time was just right. This does not work! This ship is never going to be able to interview for new jobs from 400 miles away all the while laboring in a perpetually depressed economic region and adding absolutely nothing of value to its LinkedIn profile no matter how many god-forsaken Buffalo Niagara Partnership networking events it attends. Buffalo is a blue-collar city, and this welfare queen of the lakes is an insult to the hard-working boats of the rust belt. Buffalo boats can pull their own weight. They aren’t tugged into the harbor where they moor and mooch off the good, taxpaying boats of Buffalo! And yet when the S.S. Columbia floated into town, inexplicably the legendary Fireboat Cotter, an important boat that knows the meaning of a hard day’s work, was forced to greet this stinking showboat.

The S.S. Columbia is an insult to everything that Buffalo is working against: a rust belt legacy of rotted-out crap that doesn’t matter and hardly qualifies as a “place,” the whims of elites who think it’s right and proper to use a good, American city as a parking place for a boat that had to be towed in when it should have been sent straight to the junkyard, a history of overlooking discrimination and evoking a mythical past that never existed so that some do-nothing jerks can feel smug about extending life support to a leak-pocked landmark devoid of any meaningful historical significance. I demand that we get this crap-covered, waterlogged excuse for a proper seafaring vessel out of Buffalo or sink it into the pollution-filled Buffalo River! Its presence does nothing but remind some nostalgic Crystal Beach lollipop-licking idiots that once there was a fancy old boat in Buffalo that went to a Canadian amusement park but then it was shut down because black people used it and honestly we’d all rather drive there instead.

One evening, I went down to shake my fist at the S.S. Columbia and found an artist painting this slatternly ship like one of Jack’s French girls. “I hate this boat!” I told him. It looks horrible. It’s a steamboat and none of its steamers work. It’s going to take at least 4,000 years to convince enough boat nostalgia porn enthusiasts to give enough money to fix it up and by then everyone will be living on the moon. “That boat never said anything mean about you,” the First Ward’s Renoir-in-residence told me. Bullshit it didn’t.

The Society to Promote Nautical Nonsense estimates that it will cost $18 million to get the S.S. Columbia ready for Hudson River brunch cruises and floating cocktail parties. Various fundraisers have accrued shy of $4 million from people who look at the world and see the absence of admiralty abominations as a pressing concern worthy of their financial support. A friend of the boat suggested a new fantastical currency to the Wall Street Journal when he bragged, “If the success of our project ran on nostalgia, she would be running here today.” If nostalgia were a legitimate medium of exchange, Buffalo, New York, would be a world capital of finance, but unfortunately in the ol’ reality-based universe, cash is king, which is why I don’t think the S.S. Columbia is ever going to leave Buffalo. New York City has all the shipshape anachronisms it could ever want. So many, in fact, that a wrecked 111-year-old Hudson ferryboat that couldn’t hack it as a restaurant is being torn up and evicted from its watery New Jersey outpost across the river from Upper Manhattan. If Manhattanites won’t stand the sight of a weather-ruined, wreckage-filled carcass of a steamship, then I don’t know why the hell we in Buffalo should be asked to host this monstrosity indefinitely until it gets its shit together enough to move downstate. The cost to dismantle the Binghamton is a half-million dollars, which means the S.S. Columbia loons have the cash to put this shit ship out of its misery and restore some dignity to the filthy slip behind the abandoned grain elevators where the shame of Buffalo is hiding out. If the S.S. Columbia preservation people only have 4 million nostalgia dollars, I am willing to provide my services pro bono. Say the words, and I am out there doing everything I can to knock holes into the hull, destabilize the tippy-toppy captain’s outpost and generally bring that behemoth to rest on the riverbed where it belongs. Buffalo is not a layover for boats that can’t make it in the big city! As my namesake and inspiration Oliver Hazard Perry once said, “Give up the ship.” Give it right up! You aren’t the Donald Trump of boat rehabs, and you aren’t going to make this boat great again. It’s a lost cause and a damn disgrace. Take this boat to maritime court and throw the book at it. Sink this ship once and for fucking all.

If you prefer that your donation to the filthy depths of the Buffalo River be tax-deductible, you can donate to the S.S. Columbia’s preservation fund here. I don’t fucking care. You read this entire thing and learned nothing.

Can you get drunk for $20?

A cocktail review written after an "emotional reaction haircut"

Haircut and a buzz (but not a buzz cut): kind of

You can get drunk and get a haircut for $60

Haircut: $50 before tip, includes one beer in a frosted glass; Agave restaurant jumbo margarita: $9.50 before tip

Here are some truths about life and living:

Hindsight is 20/20.

The key to getting what you want is to show up and ask twice.

Sometimes you don't choose your bangs; they choose you.

This morning, I didn't plan to get bangs. I didn't plan to get a haircut at all. I didn't plan to get drinks either. Yet, here I am, drunk at midnight with freshly shorn fringe grazing my eyebrows.

My week until this morning had been about normal: work really hard at two jobs, struggle to complete creative projects, take care of my mom after she got hit by a car, calm my own nerves after no one else in my family cared very much about the aforementioned incident. Easy.

I've been feeling a vague sense of dread because I really wanted to change primary jobs by Labor Day, and yet a week out I'm doing the same shit as usual. I've had some interviews, and invariably someone says to me, "So, you've been at the same job for, oh, almost seven years." I know neither the question nor the answer. "Yes."

I didn't realize it until today, until this #TBT morning, that September 1 has such symbolic meaning for so many of my friends, but it makes enough sense that it does. It's a clear delineator that employers, landlords and universities recognize. Still, I wasn't ready for the parade of progress-marking posts on social media today. TBT when I moved to ABC to do XYZ. Got it. Cool. OMG congrats. Fave. Me too, please.

Even less was I expecting a high school friend of mine to send an image of her future child's sonogram to the seven gal pals (plus my unfortunate prom date) who comprise my high school friend group. All are fine women who have achieved at least one of the following indicators of adulthood: advanced degree, spouse or child. Except me. I don't have any of those. I've been at the same job for, oh, almost seven years. I know neither the question nor the answer.

By 3 p.m., I needed a haircut. I've never needed something more. I spotted a few split ends in August, and I had been studying photos of Huma Abedin (before the re-emergence of Anthony's wiener) to determine whether a darker hair color would suit me as a dark-featured Hillary zealot. Bangs. Bangs! I needed a haircut today because I needed a haircut today. There is no better indicator of what is going on inside my head than what is going on atop it.

I called several salons and demurred over whether a haircut more than two hours from my call would be acceptable. Finally, I found a salon with an app, the calendar for which was wide open. A Google search of the salon promised cocktails and wine to clients. I booked a spot and showed up early. Time to party.

That app had nothing to do with the daily goings-on of the salon. When I arrived and stated that my appointment was at 5:45, I was told it was not. I repeated my request. It was satisfied. When I was offered non-alcoholic beverages, I accepted them, but then I also asked about the wine I had read about online. When denied, I employed ladylike deference to re-state my request. "Don't worry about it. I just saw that on the Elmwood Village Association website! I was so excited about it!" A beer in a frosty glass materialized. It may have been a Labatt Blue Light. I felt like a Lean In success story. (Obviously, I've never read Lean fucking In. Come on.)

That my app-assigned stylist took me between color applications and cuts is a testament to her professionalism and talent. She actually leaned in, and she wins me as a difficult but appreciative client who reliably tips 20 percent. I am pleased with how she mended my previously cut ick layers and added bangs. Bangs!

After the haircut, I met a gal pal who doesn't have a kid or graduate degree or a spouse (anymore) for a giant sour mixgarita and a pile of Mexican snacks. She's an amazing person whose self-awareness, selflessness and efforts are forever impressing me. We talked shit about all of you.

I started growing out my bangs about two years ago. I remembered having bangs throughout high school, college and the early, wild years of my 20s. When I got home, a little tipsy, I scrolled through the portraits I'm tagged to and realized my memory is false. Sometimes I had bangs, but more often I had a struggle with bangs. More often than not I was searching for a bobby pin and some dry shampoo. For now my cut is fresh, and tomorrow morning I'll ply my bangs into a pleasing shape and take some ibuprofen before going to work. I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger, as they say.

#canyougetdrunk

Personal metrics I would rather volunteer to a potential employer in lieu of my undergraduate GPA, ranked

Height Weight AP chemistry exam score SAT verbal score Lifetime total number of P-in-V sex partners Net worth Half-marathon time Entire voting history Words per minute typing speed Amount of nachos I ate last night in calories The circumference of my anus in millimeters Bra size The amount I paid in taxes last year in USD My resting heart rate Number of cigarettes I smoked last year Lifetime total number of minutes spent playing Neko Atsume, Angry Birds and Words With Friends combined Number of times I've eaten at Subway this summer and liked it

Can you get drunk for $20?

A cocktail review written on a bright-eyed, hangover-free afternoon in New Buffalo

Ballyhoo: No.

New Buffalo My six years in Buffalo* have been an extended exercise in misdirection. Whatever Buffalo offers, I want the exact opposite. In 2010, when I was trying to come up with a group of friends and a job and a place to live, I dodged that which was readily available. No Blue Light, no Chef’s dinners, no “Geico job,”* no football-centric socializing.

What I wanted and what I went out of my way to conspicuously consume were the products of a more sophisticated place than where I lived. To my friends, I was the group mixologist, turning out fresh fruit juice and obscure liqueur cocktails before it was possible to easily procure the $10 cocktail anywhere and everywhere. I still love making and drinking gourmet-level concoctions, but my zeal for buying them out of my home has waned. The cocktail zeitgeist has come and gone, and the city where it was once hard to get a French 75 is awash in bitters and bespoke beverages. And I want nothing to do with it.

The intersection of drinking and social class is fascinating. Demonstrating discriminating tastes in wine and cocktails and beers has become the norm. Some of this show of knowledge seems to be a reflection of true epicureanism, though as much of it belies social insecurity. Inevitably, as exclusive goods and services become accessible, they lose appeal to self-appointed elites. Cocktail preferences might once have been a mark of snobbishness, but ubiquity and accessibility have made once-ostentatious libations unremarkable. I’m over it.

A phrase I learned last year that has been rattling around my head seems to capture the impulse I am feeling about and sensing in the future for Buffalo, the once decidedly working class town turned posh. Nostalgie de la boue, literally “nostalgia for the mud,” is “a desire for degradation and depravity” and (often imagined) simple, lower class pleasures of the past by the cultural elite. When luxuries are democratized, the trappings of poor people become social capital.

$10 cocktails are stupid. Or as this Food and Wine article about classing up (and marking up) Long Island iced teas and the revival of ’80s-style drinks says, “There’s a backlash underway against the idea that there’s such a thing as a correct order at a cocktail bar, and I’m witnessing a turn toward unabashed pleasure.” Unabashed pleasure, commodified, might be the best description there is for nostalgie de la boue, as I understand it. It may be the way forward in Manhattan, which means it should happen in Buffalo in another five years. Until then, we have Ballyhoo.

Old Buffalo

Ballyhoo sits downwind of a breakfast cereal factory, though most of the shift work that happened nearby no longer goes on. The previous bar on the site, Malamute, seemed to be a factory workers’ joint, and the establishment and its owner got a fine send-off in the local paper. In that same article, with typical hyperbole, the closing of the bar was made out to signify a shift to New Buffalo: “But it’s clear the property is primed to play a role in the reawakening that’s rolling through this neighborhood nestled among the grain mills along the Buffalo River.”

Ballyhoo is on trend. The gourmet sausages cost $9, and the fresh-ingredient cocktails do as well. Bottles of Fernet-Branca perch on shelves behind the bar, and the otherwise dimly lit building features a bathroom with flattering lighting, half a dozen mirrors and otherwise perfect selfie-taking conditions. It has four-and-a-half stars on Yelp, and I wish it were all otherwise. Classy Buffalo zigs, I zag.

Ballyhoo’s niche is emulsifying jams and liquors together in cute little cups. During last night’s Galentine’s Day outing, I drank a grapefruit jam and tequila cocktail and a “Hoo Café.” Like a classless idiot, I needed to ask the bartender what chantilly is and why it was going in my Irish coffee approximation. Turns out it’s a fancy way to refer to whipped cream. Both drinks were meticulously constructed and cost $9. I enjoyed them, but I did not get drunk for $20. No, you cannot get drunk at Ballyhoo for less than $20 unless you drink as many of the cheapest beers (listed under “NICE CANS” on the menu) as possible. $18 before tip begets two cocktails.

1/10 (on a scale of 1 to 10 in which 1 is sober and 10 is drunk and there are no middling scores)

* I felt like I lived in an American suburb until I graduated high school and moved to Boston for college. My family wasn’t too interested in the city or urban life at all. It was a mix of personal predilections and social trends far larger than me that motivated me to apply to only large, urban universities (with the exception of a suburban, upstate safety school). Until I was 10, I lived in the city of Tonawanda, which felt (and still feels) like a place apart from Buffalo and the other suburbs of Erie county. I hold a small, irrational grudge against the canal terminus nostalgia-themed attractions in downtown Buffalo because the Erie Canal actually ends (and has since at least the mid-20th century) in Tonawanda. I have an inconsequential theory that the cities of western New York (Niagara Falls, Lockport, Lackawanna, Tonawanda, North Tonawanda) have stronger civic identities apart from the city of Buffalo than the towns. Anyways, I didn’t live in the city of Buffalo until March 2010 though I grew up a 20 minutes’ drive away.

* Still no Blue Light or Chef’s dinners, actually

* A good employment option for bachelor’s degree educated-in-whatever young people in Buffalo was, and still is, to work in an exurban call center for an insurance company.

#drinking #class #nostalgie de la boue

Am I fucking it up yet?

Tons of people write about their new year’s resolutions after a year’s efforts and outcomes. I can’t hold myself accountable with just annual reviews. Let's rate my progress on the 2016 resolutions I set!

1. I resolve to use as few water bottles and takeout coffee cups as possible. 8/10 - success Last Friday, I took the day off work and got pizza pods (mutant calzones) at a new outpost for a local Italian chain and then went ice skating. Because I slept until 11 a.m., I didn't drink any coffee in the morning, and so my dining companion, who also skipped out on a.m. caffeine, and I were slurring and fumbling our words after single servings of craft beers while awaiting carb pockets. After the cold, painful and physically challenging task of outdoor ice skating, we purchased the worst coffee in town at the destination Tim Hortons in the ground floor of a hockey and hotel complex. I used one paper cup. Earlier in the month, when my office was out of coffee, I purchased some life-giving hot sludge from my favorite gas station restaurant, which has a five-star Yelp review that I definitely didn't write myself. This place is the scene of hundreds, if not thousands, of coffee crimes, where a "four sugar, five cream medium" is de rigeuer. It's no surprise my coffee was double-cupped. I accepted a water bottle from a race volunteer after completing a 5k. I have started to carry a travel cup sporadically. 2. I resolve to be smaller in mass and volume. 0/10 - abject failure JANUARY: EAT AND DRINK YOUR FEELINGS. ICE CREAM CAKE, TACOS, PITCHERS OF ROLLING ROCK. Next. 3. I resolve to read a fucking work of fiction at all just one really that doesn't have Pusheen on the cover in 2016. N/A rating No fiction yet! I have another eleven months to work my way up to this. 4. I resolve to run one organized race every month. 10/10 - success I completed the Penguin Run in 29 minutes 11 seconds. 5. I resolve to let less produce go to waste. Wasting food is too easy when you live alone! 4/10 - stasis Oh, how I dread cleaning my fridge. Right now, I know I have half a moldy, flaccid cucumber wrapped in tin foil, a tiny Tupperware of about 10 sad raspberries, three-quarters of a stalk of limp celery and other assorted evidence of my failure to crush this resolution menacing me from behind the fridge door. That said, I did a pretty good job eating most of my produce in a timely fashion. I even caught a red bell pepper that was wrinkly but suitable for sauteing before its demise. The produce corpses packed in foil and plastic that I'd just rather not handle are my biggest challenge for this resolution. 6. I resolve to volunteer on a monthly basis. 0/10 - abject failure I did not volunteer this past month. I came up with an idea that I didn't have enough time to execute, and I found an event to help out with next week, but I did not succeed for January (I will allow myself to come up with a total of 12 volunteering events for the year, however, so not all hope is lost). I determined for myself that running 5Ks and donations are not volunteering even though my coworker told me her son met his high school's volunteering requirement by giving blood, which seems suspect. I’ll do this with integrity if I do it at all. 7. I resolve to do literally any other job than the one I have done for five too many years. 2/10 - modest improvement I experienced modest success as a writer by publishing my first reported work since college for the local alt-weekly, and I have completed job apps, interviews and skills assessments that may or may not lead to any kind of favorable outcome.

What should my next job be?

A little over two years ago, I went to a mayoral debate. The two men who were challenging the sitting mayor, Byron Brown, proffered their ideas and schemes for running Buffalo better than the mayor. His primary response to their attacks was to take credit for things that had occurred when he was mayor even if they hadn’t occurred because he was mayor. The best qualification for holding office is to have held office. I was the mayor at this photo-op. I stood front and center at this ribbon-cutting ceremony because I was the mayor. Therefore, I should be the mayor.

The quality of the challengers and the funding schemes of their campaigns affected the outcome of that election, of course, but the incumbent's advantage played a role, and Brown cruised to another term. The best way to get a certain job is by already having it or one very similar. How a schlub can overcome the incumbent’s advantage is a mystery to me, but one I have been contemplating as I plot to change jobs in 2016.*

Football coach Doug Marrone has had only one NFL head coaching job, which he left in a show of disregard for niceties, texting his players the news and exiting his contract at just the right moment to collect a cash windfall. That was at the end of the 2014 Bills season, and yet now, a year later, Marrone is on the shortlist for head coaching gigs with at least four teams, if my Googling of sports rumor mills is reliable (it's not). If Doug Marrone can get a new job, surely I can, right? Perhaps, what's least apt about my comparison isn't that Doug Marrone is a millionaire football coach whereas I’m paralegal, but that he is an incumbent in his field, and I'm not.

I'm not actually sure what my aspired-to field is. I read an article about questionably millennial millennials moving to Buffalo to be vice presidents of banks or some shit this past weekend, but I did not understand how a person would get these jobs. Based on my searching for Buffalo jobs, openings seem to require significant incumbent advantage or emphatically insist upon a GED. I have been told that as a skill-lacking fool with a bachelor's degree, I should seek out people I admire for "informational interviews." I can't find anyone whose job I want with the exception of primetime news anchor/Miss New York 1990 Maryalice Demler.

So, job listings it is. I found what honestly looks like a great job to me: school bus route-maker. I love maps. I have a great sense of direction. The pay is good for Buffalo and it's a city job, which means it should have good benefits. I can absolutely make schedules and draw maps. But! In order to route buses, one must have been a school bus driver! Why did I go to Boston University when I should have gone to bus driving school? How come bus driving schools don't send out recruitment materials to high school students with high SAT scores? Why did I set myself up for this failure?

A particularly infuriating piece of career advice I found in an internet slideshow promoted alongside an article about the secret ex-boyfriend symbolism in the latest Taylor Swift video is, Don't expect to change jobs if you don't like your job. If you don't like your job, it will be obvious to people who might hire you away from it and no one likes that. I do not know what HR manager Beth would suggest otherwise.

Putting words about job discontent or, more neutrally, searching online seems to be a liability for finding work. Somehow, these super important things are supposed to be furtively arranged and then happily announced in weirdly staged Facebook posts. Secrecy surrounds markets based on scarcity. This is a time when jobs are so few and hiring is so arbitrary that talking openly about jobs is a risky behavior, which probably indicates that employers and corporations hold too much power.

* My coworkers are great, and I learned a great deal during a short window of time at my company. There's just no advancement potential, and the industry doesn't excite me in any way at all. I go out of my way not to disparage my coworkers or employers while maintaining a candid social media profile. That I am looking for other opportunities would in no way imperil my job or upset my supervisor, which is something I feel I need to say to indicate that I have Good Judgment and have given some consideration to Social Media Best Practices and Professionalism.

#jobs

Can you get drunk for $20?

A cocktail review written through mascara streaks, dislodged false eyelashes and Mariah Carey classics

Providence Social: Yes.

Fuck your Dryanuary. Fuck it right to hell.

For the inaugural installment of Can You Get Drunk For $20? I went to Providence Social, a “new American” (small plates, Brussels sprouts, bitters-in-cocktails) restaurant in Buffalo, on the third day of 2016 and during the last game of the Bills’ 2015/2016 season.

Forty-odd years ago a mob hit felled a man outside this restaurant, and its mafia ancestry inspired me to ask whether a trio of menacing men in a framed photograph on the wall were mobsters. They're actually the French Connection. Rick Martin's family runs the operation that replaced Romanello's Roseland. (Prime 490 occupied the address in between.) Subtle and less-so tributes to the hockey legend fill the restaurant (a vanity license plate with his nickname, a bubble hockey table incongruously dropped into the bar area, respectively).

I had a passable brunch of disappointing sweet potato hash (prettier than tasty) and poached eggs and toast. A previous brunch when I ordered a savory breakfast-stuffed poblano was a far better choice than the meal I put together à la carte. But, what am I doing telling you about brunch? You know how to order eggs.

At Providence Social, you can order a pitcher of mimosas that includes a full bottle of probably-not-Champagne Champagne for $9. Order it! One a person! Tip generously! You're about to drink too much while watching the Bills close out a winning* season that won't take them to the playoffs for the 16th straight year. The New Buffalo era ushered in by the Pegulas using their fracking money to buy things in Buffalo means nothing! Drink a half-dozen mimosas!

When you get up to go the bathroom, stumble back toward your barstool. "I need to take some selfies," you explain while picking up your iPhone and batting the New Year's Eve false eyelashes you inexplicably re-affixed to your lids this afternoon.

Two feet from a toilet you take a horrible selfie while the Bills amble toward a meaningless win. Garbage time. Around the fourth mimosa, the vastly disappointing back-up QB was brought out to make one play that exploits his expendability. E.J.'s worthlessness, in a move you didn't entirely understand, makes him indispensable. This is how you feel.

Yes, you can get drunk at Providence Social for less than $20 ($9 and a tip)

10/10 (on a scale of 1 to 10 in which 1 is sober and 10 is drunk and there are no middling scores)

* Is 8-8 winning? It is not losing.

#foodie #write drunk edit drunk

Twelve years of dinner parties

I am cursed to be a gregarious misanthrope. I hate you all, but I have a compulsive need to be surrounded by people otherwise I fear I’m missing out, I’m missing out! I am #blessed to have met so many people who are extroverted but unable to engage with other humans in a completely conventional manner. I have known many of these creatures since high school, and in the dozen years since senior year we’ve gathered together annually for a late-December dinner party.

There is apparently no photographic evidence of the first two dinner parties, but they definitely did occur. The event was conceived as a “Last Thursday in December Dinner Party” simply because as a teen atheist I demanded a special occasion on which to celebrate and Thursdays (my favorite day) in December were sufficient. The final Thursday of 2004 culminated in a dinner party at my childhood home. The final Thursday of 2005 produced the same celebration, and the early themes for these two parties were, I swear, Mexican and lasagna, but who really knows? My high school mean girl squad forms the core group of participants. When it’s necessary to figure out all of these people (group texts re life events, bachelorette planning, Facebook tagging) I run through a mnemonic in my head: LSD for Liz, Stephie and Debbie, the trio that ran cross-country together. And E! for Erin, who ran only track but insisted upon an illicit drug nickname. Emily and Lisa, who are best friends and merged into the clique together. And Sarah. Just Sarah. That’s the core crew, plus a few other girlfriends who had friends besides us (Kathleen, Amy and Alana, chorus girls with social skills come to mind) and whoever the girls were giving hand jobs to but rounding up to intercourse. High school! And freshman year!

In 2006, the dinner party was almost ended by a family spat between me and a relative who posted nasty insults about my friends on my blog. Early adoption cyberbullying! Most everyone can remember her sexually explicit, slut-shaming epithet, except for Erin, who didn’t get one, which was perhaps the greatest slight of all. Unable to gather the group under my family’s roof, the venue moved to Lisa’s house and the party was unshackled from Thursday much to my chagrin.

Emily reenacted a scene from Grey’s Anatomy in which the main characters rest with their heads under a tree in a scene that is likely tranquil and moving in the show, but was dumb and ungraceful in real life. Naturally, we repeated this act for many years thereafter. / Boush and Kiang grapple because young men do this I guess? / Friends among food. Bebes here, really. Hello, 19-year-olds.

In 2007 through 2008, Lisa reprised her role as hostess. Here, in 2007, I demonstrate how not to eat soup while wearing my prom dress and intimidating Emily, apparently.

In 2008, Jeff demonstrated how not to eat soup. My friends have horrible manners. That same year, as newly minted 21-year-olds, alcohol began making appearances at our parties, which quickly got out of control.

In 2009, the party moved to Emily’s house, though I can’t find any photographic evidence of this iteration. We dressed in color-coded Clue costumes. For what it’s worth, I have actually never had pot brownies and I am pretty wary of drugs overall so I’m not sure why I asked for them in this screencapped description from our Facebook event. 2009: a dark year.

EDIT: Kathleen found these pictures from 2009. Notice the Clue-themed clothing. Apples to Apples / Prof. Plum and Mrs. Peacock.

By 2010, I had my own apartment in Buffalo and regained hosting privileges. Liz and Jeff have been dating for longer than this party has existed, which is insane. / Two years taught me, a gin-swilling mess, how to drink like a lady. / Friends!

In 2011, a new apartment for me, but the same old sea slugs at the party. The theme this year is sandwiches / The caption for this photo indicates that I am googling “Cork shortage” and Bleary is wishing for a lewd typo / Friends! / A “1-2-3″ pic, which is to say, the top 1 percent of our high school graduating class. Starting in 2005, when we were invited to events for high-ranking students, we started staging these, which has led to weird insecurity from friends with double digit rankings. I am No. 3. / Lisa and Emily began taking selfies before they were called selfies, an act that earned them only ridicule -- but you can’t even see where you are! it’s just your faces! -- from the dawn of the cheap digital camera era to 2013 when we all gave in to the indulgence of self-portraiture. / Men.

There is no photographic evidence I can find of the 2012 dinner party, but the theme was definitely balls! And here are some nice pictures of friends on a bachelorette wine tour a few days before or after the party. These weeks, with the bachelorette and Liz’s wedding a week or so later, are probably the most photographed period of the squad’s history. We were like Taylor Swift trailed by photogs all the time so I presume the dinner party was a more private affair.

2013 was the last year I could fit my friends in my one-bedroom apartment. I have made new friends who are regularly excluded from the dinner party and high school pals are occasionally unable to make it home for the holidays. Until I get rich and have a big house or lose all my friends when they realize I’ve posted dumb pictures of them online, the party must travel. Excluded from this year’s media set is a video of a couple “motor-boating.” Panoramic / Civilized! The theme this year is crusts / Barbaric!

The party moved to Resurgence Brewery in 2014 despite fierce opposition. Listen, shits, Shannon and Elena, among others, couldn’t have come if we were squished into my apartment. Look how nice they are! The theme is beer and pizza, and the venue was as loud as the complaints about it.

In 2015, the party moved to the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle, a civic group to which I inexplicably belong. Shannon, Elena and I are the last ones standing leaning on a crèche at the end of the night. / Here’s some of the partiers; a few had already had their fun and left, and missing are Sarah (unexcused), Liz (pregnant far away) and Debbie (home with kids).

To next year, fuckfaces!

A selection of the group fitness classes currently available at the exercise studio I attend

How else do you think I maintain this toothsome form? (Everyone in these classes looks better than me, and they are reasonably priced. Humiliate yourself with me.)

All class names sic. BOOTY BOTOX TWERKSHOP Beyonce BOOTY –BARRE TWERK booty barre (cakebythepound) TwerkOUT Bootybarre ‘drop it low’ Booty Barre “Call of Booty” Booty BARRE “Booty Call” Flawless BARRE

#humiliation #fitspo

Trash day

The word of the trash lord. Praise be to garbage. Since I last crawled out of the Dumpster in which I was born to proclaim the word in filth to the trash faithful, 18 months have passed. During this time, I have fully gestated two immaculate garbage babies, trawled for treasures in the underworld of trash and consulted with the Oracle at Delphi, which is a junkyard cat in Lockport at the Delphi radiator factory, not to be confused with the mystical soothsayer in Greece. I come to you with the word of the trash lord. Praise be to garbage. The trash that best pleases the devil god of garbage is flaming trash, and the devil god of garbage is very pleased indeed.

A Missouri supplicant to the trash lord brought his offering of flaming trash to a field and then sacrificed his gasoline- and gunpowder-filled van to the great trash bonfire in the sky. It is right to give the trash lord thanks and praise and any inflammable effluvium you have lying around. Praise be to trash god. Not only is actual garbage burning bright with the fervor of trash worship, but figurative garbage pyres are ablaze in 2015. As your humble prophet of trash, I foresaw the coming of Peak Dumpster Fire in March.

And here we are, alive in the golden age of Dumpster fires. The GOP Congress is a raging Dumpster fire with no end in sight. The 2016 presidential election is already a Dumpster fire. The Vancouver Canucks could well be a Dumpster fire. The Colts are a dumpster fire waiting to happen. Everywhere EVERYWHERE Dumpster fires are aglow! The garbage people who follow football and/or politics demand it, and the god of garbage giveth.

Recycling, which is the enemy of trash, has been dealt a righteous blow this week in Niagara Falls, New York -- long a bastion of garbage worship where recycling rates hover in the single digits and please the lord of trash very much. False prophet Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster proclaimed the word of recycling alongside khaki-clad Celtic satyr Totes McGoats.

Dyster's blasphemous religion of recycling has already been cast into chaos by the just and good lord of trash, who sent forth twin Totes McGoats twitter accounts to stir up confusion on earth. Beware of false idols, Niagara Falls!

A "wish bowl" at the Spot Coffee on Hertel Avenue now doubles as a collection basket for the church of garbage. Please give what you can.

The word of the trash lord. Amen.

#trash day

[from inside elite intellectual institution HQ]

HQ: People need to start flushing their dumps around here IMO

SMP: Why do they not?

HQ: Not sure. Maybe they think it's for other people to do for them.

SMP: So deep in thought?

HQ: Yeah probably.

SMP: I definitely think you should start an [elite intellectual institution] toilet twitter account. I'd follow. I'd RT.

HQ: I just saw a dump that'll stay with me for some time.

SMP: Take pics!

HQ: Man, if I had the stomach to do that I would. Such a good idea. But I would vomit.

SMP: What happens? Like in the stall

HQ: Goddamn. I went to another bathroom and a seat was covered in poo.

HQ: I hate this place.

#shitforbrains

SOS: Believe me, I'm glad I grew up in North Buffalo

SOS: God, getting plastered in Caz Park with Colleens, Meghans, and Kellys would not have been a good life.

The right way to eat lunch

The right way to eat lunch is twice. The right way to eat lunch is in San Diego on a Saturday afternoon. The right way to eat lunch is, first, at one of those open floor plan, multi-counter, Italian culinary emporiums. The right way to eat lunch is affirmatively: Yes, I will have quiche; yes, I would like pizza; yes, a trio of tiny, perfect desserts delights me. The right way to eat lunch is, first, indulgently, with cloth napkins and superfluous drizzles of good balsamic and real cutlery and the best designed coffee cup and saucer set you’ve ever used (the saucer’s traditional dimple is convex and the cup securely interlocks with it). The right way to eat lunch is again, immediately: walk 0.1 miles to the next restaurant with your partner in gluttony. The right way to eat lunch is, second, at Mexican Fiesta, a squat shack with a takeout window, a warning sign (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”), a faded mural of a cock fight and a name that refuses to flatter you in the way Pan Bon did. The right way to eat lunch is al fresco at a nearby Little Italy-branded cafe table, a convenient third place brought to you by the same forces that erected the gleaming glass towers that dwarf Mexican Fiesta. The right way to eat lunch is under the midday sun, wrestling the contents of tacos into their shells and balancing guac atop the rolled tacos that were plated on a Styrofoam tray accompanied by plastic forks. The right way to eat lunch is socially, with a set of friends who weren’t at Lunch No. 1, who are slightly taken aback by your epicurean pillaging of this quiet block.

The right way to eat lunch is so mindfully that a week later when you recollect your memories you have but one single photo of this five-course campaign, one that wasn’t even good enough for Instagram.

#lunch #the greatest city on earth

U.S. presidents who are no taller than singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, 5′ 10′‘

John Adams James Madison John Quincy Adams Martin Van Buren William Henry Harrison James K. Polk Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore Franklin Pierce Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes Benjamin Harrison William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt Calvin Coolidge Harry S. Truman Jimmy Carter

by order of presidency

per Wikipedia

#taylorswiftforpresident

Employers to consider after failing a proofreading test

Amazon,com Anthropologie A&T Wireless Barns & Noble Bugger King Build-A-Bare Dick's Spurting Goods Hole Foods

Men's Wherehouse Rite AIDS Starbuck's Yum? Brands

#fourman of the typo crew #lead shit supervisor #sue chef

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